Community
11 September, 2025
Bates to throw a milestone party
ONE of Mortlake’s most popular stores will celebrate its past and present with the wider community this week.
Bates IGA will be hosting a community celebration tomorrow (Friday, September 12).
The celebration will include in-store tastings, the Mortlake Lions Club firing up the grill for a free barbecue from 12noon-3pm, spin and win wheel in-store from 10am-4pm and even the chance for shoppers to win a smart television.
Bates IGA manager Ian Mahncke said the celebration would serve as a nod to the past and the future.
“Our 50-year milestone was passed in 2020 but, as it was during COVID-19, we didn’t really get the chance to thank our customers,” he said.
“We then jumped into renovations which took a couple of years from go-to-woah, but we’ve now worked our way through that and ticked all those boxes.
“We’ve thought now was a good time to say thank you because we didn’t close during renovations so there was a fair bit going on, with a fair bit of inconvenience, but our customers were loyal.
“We’re at 55 years now and it’s become a celebration of the Bates family serving the community and a way to celebrate with our customers.”
Mr Mahncke said the upgrades had marked the second major renovation works during the five decades the family had owned the store.
He said the decision to push ahead with the renovations was all about modernising the store and keeping relevant with the times.
“When I was a teenager this store was probably half the size, with a hairdresser out the front,” Mr Mahncke said.
“We’ve knocked out so much, with bluestone walls knocked out to open everything up.
“We shifted fruit, vegetables and meat out to what had previously been an old storeroom while dropping the floor around two feet for our fresh area.
“We’ve added another cool room to house meat and soft drink, doubled our liquor area in size and expanded fridges and freezers.
“The floor was all concreted, we put furnishings down, swung our aisles around and have added new shelving.”
Mr Mahncke said the upgrades would hopefully future-proof the store and its local jobs at a time when delivery services through major suppliers was on the rise.
“We’re never going to be able to give the offers of Woolworths or Coles, or the pricing of Aldi, because we’d go broke,” he said.
“But we do want to help people if they don’t want their dollars to go out of town.
“We know people appreciate that not much goes on where we don’t have some kind of a donation involved such as sporting clubs, churches, schools and community groups.
“There’s plenty in the community we give back to but we’re able to support the community because the community supports us.”
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